“You know-I don’t know what to say to you,” he said. “All day, all last night, I’ve been trying to think of what I wanted to say to you.”
And he had to say it now? But what could I do? I lifted one hand and let it fall to my side. “I really am sorry, Bob. I really am.”
A silent laugh broke through his lips. “You know, I really don’t think you are. I actually don’t think you’re capable of it. Of being sorry. Of really feeling anything for other people.”
“No. No, hell. I feel stuff. I feel bad,” I said.
His lip curled, turning the smile into a sneer. He eyed me as if I were a bad smell. He stood in his khaki slacks and his blue workshirt and his cheerful pink tie, one hand in his pocket and the other clenching and unclenching at his side. And I wished he would hit me. It would be faster, anyway, and I really had to be going.
“Well, I’m glad you feel bad, Steve,” he said bitterly. “But I don’t think you really begin to understand. I mean, I want to know why.” These last words broke from him-if anything ever broke from him-if he ever let anything just break from him unconsidered, these last words did.
“Why?” I echoed.
He looked away, shaking his head again. I think he was sorry he’d said it.
But I did my best to give him some kind of answer. “These things, you know. They just happen, man. I was lonely. I didn’t think. It was an impulse kind of …”
“Christ!” In a typically youthful gesture, he brushed the shaggy forelock back off his brow with one hand. As he did, in the cramped space, his elbow touched one of the shelves and it shook ominously, rattling a box of pens. He had not raised his voice, but all at once his eyes looked tormented and damp. “You think I mean you?” he said. “You think I want to know why you did it?”
“I don’t know, I …” A trickle of sweat ran down the back of my neck. What time was it anyway? I didn’t dare look at my watch.
“I want to know why she did it. With you. Christ. I can’t imagine what she was thinking of. Was it just … the sex?”
I didn’t answer. I shifted from foot to foot. I was embarrassed, to be honest. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell-as always, I wasn’t sure-how much of his emotion was real, and how much was display, a show of drama, a way of beating me up with his pain. Was it possible, I thought, that he was actually losing control here?
I considered him another second or two, and I thought that maybe he was. That maybe all day, and all last night, he had been sitting on this, fighting it, holding it back, and now-now, curse my luck, when I had to get out of there fast-he finally couldn’t stop himself. He wanted to know. Sure. That was it. It had to be. He must’ve hated himself for doing this, for asking me flat out this way-but he wanted to know, he had to know. The basics. The core of it. Was it good-for me and Patricia in bed? Was it better than it was with him? Did she talk about him, did she tell me about whatever weird little things he liked? Did we laugh about him before I rammed into her and balled her blind?
“No,” I lied. “No, hell. It was no big passionate thing. It was nothing like that.”
I saw the shadow of relief cross his face but it was quickly gone. “Then what?” he said, more urgently, more desperately than he could’ve wanted. “She doesn’t love you?”
“No, of course not.”
He smiled his mirthless smile again, but his lips were quivering. “She can’t think you’d be good for her, for Christ’s sake. Faithful to her. That you’d be there for her, or you’d help her with her work, or run interference with her parents, or have kids with her or help her raise them. She can’t think you’d help her grow and develop as a human being.”
I laughed before I could stop myself. “No, I guess she couldn’t think that.” I stopped laughing when I saw his expression. I cleared my throat. “No,” I said more softly. “She doesn’t. I’m sure.”
He gazed at me now with a sort of emptiness that was almost innocence, that looked almost like innocence in a way. His eyes were dry now. They were more than dry, they were arid. They were dark. They did not reflect me, as if I weren’t there. And I felt, with a certain sickness, how stupid, how dangerous it was, to make a man like Bob your enemy.
“You have a wife. Doesn’t your wife …?” he began, and his voice sounded dull, as if he were speaking in a trance. “Does she just tolerate it? Does she like it this way with you?” That horrible smile flickered at his lips. “I mean, maybe I take her too much at her word. Are you like her father, am I supposed to be more like that bastard was with her? I mean she says she wants something …”
“My wife …?” I said. “I’m sorry, I don’t …”
“I mean, what do they want?”
“Who? Oh.” Women, he meant. We had reached that stage of the proceedings. Fortunately, though, I wasn’t drunk enough to start speculating about what women want. So I simply raised a helpless hand again. “Look, Bob, I’ve got to go.”
Rage struck through his face like lightning, passed away like lightning.
“It’s that interview. At the prison,” I said quickly. I did look at my watch now. “Christ.” It was after three. “I’m going to be late if I don’t get going.”
After a moment, Bob nodded. His slim frame rose and fell with a deep breath. He didn’t say anything. It was spooky, the way he looked at me, the way his eyes erased me. But he didn’t say anything at all.
“Well …” I said.
He turned without a word, his back pressed against the shelves. It opened up a little pathway to the door for me. I squeezed through it, past him, and pushed the door open while he stood there silently.
But I couldn’t just leave it at that. As much as I had to go-as much as I wanted to go-I couldn’t just leave it at that.
I turned, holding the door open. “How did you find out anyway?” I asked him.
He snorted without looking at me. “She told me,” he said.
“She …?”
“She left your cigarettes in an ashtray by her bedside table. That was her way of telling me.”
I think I gaped at him. I felt as if I had been blackjacked and I think, for a while, I just stood there and gaped. I had always cleaned the ashtrays out myself. I had always emptied them into the toilet. Patricia would have had to have salaged the butts somehow, would have had to have hidden them from me and then replaced them in the ashtray herself. Which made perfect sense, of course. Because it was about Bob. It had always been about her and Bob. She could have used anyone to do this to him. To send this message to him, whatever the message was. She could have used anyone. It only happened to be me.
When I was finished gaping, I nodded. Bob stood still, his back pressed against the shelves, his eyes trained on nothing. I left him there and hurried off across the city room, closing the supply room door behind me.
4
At about that hour-around three o’clock-the Reverend Harlan Flowers was allowed into the Deathwatch cell again. He stood just within the door, his hands folded in front of him, and watched the Beachums through the bars of the cage.
Frank and Bonnie were sitting close together on the bed, holding one another’s hands between them. Gail was seated at the table, drawing with her crayons. There were bowls of popcorn on the table and the floor, some paper soda cups and a half-eaten hot dog on a plate. As the child drew, she kept up a low monologue about this and that-her friends at school, what her teachers had said-and Frank answered her and asked her questions.
After a minute or two, Bonnie lifted her eyes and saw Flowers standing there. She spoke in a whisper to Frank. “It’s time for Gail to go.” They had arranged it this way. So that Bonnie and Frank would have a few hours alone together before the six o’clock end of visiting hours. Later, Flower’s wife was coming down to Osage to take care of Gail during the execution, when both Bonnie and Flowers would be witnesses.